Repeatedly driving the same stage to try to improve your best time until you are familiar with not only every corner but every bump and patch of dust in the road is great - but the career stage is what makes the game.
A car, yesterday.
If you've only played the Dirt games, then please go back and at least try this one and you'll find out what it's really all about. In the first Dirt game the career progression is nonsensical. You just drive individual, unrelated stages and are given points for each one you are successful in and so unlock others. In 2005 you drive a series of related stages in the same vehicle, fixing it in between, and get career progression points if you do well in the overall event. There can be a lot of stages in an event and if it's a close call, you can throw away 45 minutes of driving by sliding off at a corner near the end of the last stage and hitting a tree head on. It's tense and serious and never trivialised by truck racing (though that can be fun).
Before each stage (or sometimes, each pair of stages) you have to set up the car. You choose the tires and set other parameters, too. Getting the right tires is imperative and the other stuff can be a real help. One plus here is that there is a bit of detail but not too much. If you are a bit useless like me you can gear the car low so that you don't go so fast that you lose control and you can recover quickly if you make a mistake.
There are 76 stages to try in 9 different countries and a good variety of cars of differing specs including some classics like the VW Beetle and Mini Cooper. The different road surfaces are what really keeps it interesting, though. Sweden's ice and snow being the most novel but the different grades of gravel being the most fun.
Since we must waste out lives playing games, lets waste them playing this one.
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